Quotes from Nathaniel Hawthorne

He had spoken the very truth and transformed it into the veriest falsehood. And yet, by the constitution of his nature, he loved the truth and loathed the lie, as few men ever did. Therefore, above all things else, eh loathed his miserable self.

The minister felt for the child's other hand, and took it. The moment that he did so, there came what seemed a tumultuous rush of new life, other life than his own, pouring like a torrent into his heart, and hurrying through all his veins, as if the mother and the child were communicating their vital warmth to his half-torpid system. The three formed an electric chain.

They stood in the noon of that strange and solemn splendour, as if it were the light that is to reveal all secrets, and the daybreak that shall unite all who belong to one another.

But never had their youthful beauty seemed so pure and high, as when its glow was chastened by adversity.

Here was the iron link of mutual crime, which neither he nor she could break. Like all other ties, it brought along with it its obligations.

L'amore, sia quando nasce, sia quando risorge da un letargo che era sembrato mortale, sprigiona tanta luce che tutto il mondo d'intorno se ne accende

O exquisite relief! She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom! By

It is to the credit of human nature that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and a quiet process, will even be transformed to love, unless the change be impeded by a continually new irritation of the original feeling of hostility.

In all seasons of calamity, indeed, whether general or of individuals, the outcast of society at once found her place. She came, not as a guest, but as a rightful inmate, into the household that was darkened by trouble, as if its gloomy twilight were a medium in which she was entitled to hold intercourse with her fellow-creatures.

Then, it is true, the prosperity of human nature to tell the very worst of itself, when embodied in the person of another, would constrain them to whisper the black scandal of bygone years.

Hence, too, might be drawn a weighty lesson from the little-regarded truth, that the act of the passing generation is the germ which may and must produce good or evil fruit in a far-distant time; that, together with the seed of the merely temporary crop, which mortals term expediency, they inevitably sow the acorns of a more enduring growth, which may darkly overshadow their posterity. The

At the other end....was provided a deep and cushioned seat. Here, on the cushion, lay a folio tome, probably of the Chronicles of England, or other such substantial literature; even as, in our own days, we scatter gilded volumes on the centre-table, to be turned over by the casual guest.

I have an almost miraculous power of escaping from necessities of this kind. Destiny itself has often been worsted in the attempt to get me out to dinner.

What little bird of scarlet plumage may this be?...' 'I am Mother's child,' answered the scarlet vision, 'and my name is Pearl!

All through life that piece of crape had hung between him and the world; it had separated him from cheerful brotherhood and woman's love and kept him in that saddest of all prisons his own heart;

More than once, he had cleared his throat, and drawn in the long, deep, and tremulous breath, which, when sent forth again, would come burdened with the black secret of his soul.

It was carelessly at first, like a man chiefly accustomed to look inward, and to whom external matters are of little value and import, unless they bear relation to something within his mind.

Indeed, the same dark question often rose into her mind with reference to the whole race of womanhood. Was existence worth accepting, even to the happiest among them?

I look around me, and, lo! on every visage a black veil!

He had striven to put a cheat upon himself by making the avowal of a guilty conscience, but had gained only one other sin, and a self-acknowledged shame, without the momentary relief of being self-deceived. He had spoken the very truth, and transformed it into the veriest falsehood.

and I love to watch how the day, tired as it is, lags away reluctantly, and hates to be called yesterday so soon.

It was one of those moments - which sometimes occur only at the interval of years - when a man's moral aspect is faithfully revealed to his minds age.

No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.

The world's law was no law for her mind